


Bad Vibes

by Nebulad



Series: Cannibal Witch of the Wilds [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Daedra Worship, F/M, Fluff, Other, Pining, Septimus - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 04:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13000332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: “Oh look, a cave—” she’d noticed and was already peering inside by the time he got it all out, “—said the idiot companion.” He followed her, easily able to see into the dark over the shoulder— more accurately her head, but he’d never say so. “I think its a ladder,” he said, squinting. She made a move for it and he grabbed the back of her robes. “I also think the one able to parry a sword without the use of their ribcage should go first.”“Nothing stops a sword like setting the wielder on fire.”“Nothing stops a mage from casting fire like a sword to the ribs.”





	Bad Vibes

The rowboat with the name “Septimus” carved into the wood in a hand that was clearly trembling seemed like a bad omen to Rumarin. Everything in Skyrim was a bad omen portending one thing or another, so he was actually correct at least seventy percent of the time; unfortunately, Tsabhira was a special sort of person. Namely, she was a know-it-all Bosmer with the soul of a dragon who couldn’t be dissuaded from a falling building if she got it in her head to stay.

So when she said she wanted to see what was over the water, he got in the boat. Even if there was something nasty on the other side, he always put his money on Tsabhi because she always won. What sort of elf took odds against the Dragonborn? Besides the Thalmor, of course, but they didn’t know enough to come in from the rain; they were one step above cult, with their only redeeming feature being sensible enough to have been born in the south rather than _Skyrim._ Then again, was that negated by the fact that so many of them seemed to be wandering the tundras now? And then of course there was Ulundil, but he was so perpetually pleased with everything that he could own stables in the Badlands and still smile about how warm the weather always was.

“You realise you’re talking out loud, right?” Tsabhi asked, eyeing him curiously. Candlelight— and he was pretty sure she could cast it without using any magicka at all by now— lit her eyes from behind her hood and face cover and he found himself at a… momentary loss for words. He could go on for hours about absolutely nothing, but Tsabhi was a singular topic on which there was a lot to say but none of it made him sound anything less than completely desperate. It’d been… what, a year? Closer to a year and a half? She was practically an extension of himself, if extensions came much shorter than the original and less graceful because, well, _mages._ Not one of them ever thought to learn a skill besides finger-waggling, as if it would always stop a sword.

The point was that after a year and a half-ish, he still couldn’t do any better than their introduction. He’d made a joke about how much it would cost to ‘hire’ him, and she’d responded with some dry quip about how disappointing it was that the price didn’t include tongue kissing. Well, she’d said tongue jousting but to be fair to her it was kind of a weird conversation anyway, made weirder by the screeching mental halt he’d come to, followed by an awkward _not that it doesn’t form an appealing visual…_

“Rumarin?”

“Sorry. For a second I think it got so cold I briefly died. What’s Sovngarde supposed to look like again?” It was a stupid sidestep when the reasonable thing to say when he thought she looked nice was to _tell her so._ Tsabhi didn’t seem inclined towards companionship let alone companionship that included tongue-jousting, though, so best not to press his luck.

“How should I know?” She was smiling, though, so at least he hadn’t been gawking at her or something equally unsettling.

“That’s true, I suppose. If it wasn’t Sovngarde, though, then maybe I went to Altmer hell; basically the same as Sovngarde, only with all the milk-drinkers that couldn’t beat Tsun.”

“You already know more than I do.”

“Oh it’s all from Otero mocking it. We put on a fantastic play once where he was Tsun and pummeled my father with a toy sword. We were out of prop materials so we had two white Khajiit playing the whalebone bridge Nords cross to get to the mead hall.” That earned him a laugh, which on her was more of a snort, but as he no longer had to explain why he’d stopped talking for nearly a minute just watching her, he counted it as a success.

She was going to respond, but they both jerked forward as they tiny ship ran aground. “Land ho,” she said instead, standing up fluidly.

“Oh look, a cave—” she’d noticed and was already peering inside by the time he got it all out, “—said the idiot companion.” He followed her, easily able to see into the dark over the shoulder— more accurately her head, but he’d never say so. “I think its a ladder,” he said, squinting. She made a move for it and he grabbed the back of her robes. “I also think the one able to parry a sword without the use of their ribcage should go first.”

“Nothing stops a sword like setting the wielder on fire.”

“Nothing stops a mage from casting fire like a sword to the ribs.”

She paused, evidently remembering any number of times where an actual sword (well, not an _actual_ sword but a sword more corporeal than not) tended to come in handy. Between the two of them, shockingly, Rumarin was the adventurer; Tsabhi was highly specialized in hands-off combat and all but required him to pick up her slack. She did all right, sure, but call it a coincidence that since picking him up she hadn’t had to act as a pincushion for every pointy bit of iron in Skyrim quite so often. “Where did I ever pick up such a brave jester?” she asked wryly, patting his cheek. She had to reach up. He didn’t say so.

“Please. I could send that creepy fellow from in front of Larius’ farm in my stead and you wouldn’t notice until the jingle bells started to annoy you.” She laughed, and it was the one that was quiet and less malicious than the others. So far, she’d only directed it at him; Brynjolf and Brelyna made her bark sharply, and Revyn Sadri was always good for a snort or two, but Rumarin had full rights to the quiet laugh. He didn’t know what it implied, but he liked the exclusivity. “Down the scary snow hole, then,” he said, barely resisting the urge to draw some crude comparison between the scary snow hole and Nord sex.

She laughed again, but it was meaner than before. She always got his jokes, even if he didn’t make them.

His feet hit the ground and almost immediately slipped out from underneath him. He was able to steady himself on the ladder that really didn’t seem like it should’ve supported him so easily, and summon his sword so Tsabhi could at least see him. “Are you all right?” she asked, kneeling now, and he waved.

“There’s a little tunnel,” he said, hoping she could hear him. Whatever was actually through the tunnel would preferably be kept unaware of their presence. “Nothing in the immediate area.”

She didn’t wait for anymore information, sliding down the ladder and landing with the same grace he had. _“Y’ffre’s arse,_ who _designed_ this blighted province?” she demanded, steadying herself on him rather than the ladder. He smothered a snort and set her more or less on her feet, dropping her in time for the fire to crawl up her arms. It drew visual attention to them, but Tsabhi barely needed more than a moment. He’d never met a stealth mage before her, although privately he wondered at the combination of the two most delicate classes.

She slid forward, keeping close to the wall and shying from the flickering torchlight. Inside the high cavern was hardly the small army of Falmer, trolls, vampire trolls, vampire Falmer, and vampire-Falmer-trolls that Rumarin had expected; instead, there was an old man in mage robes muttering to himself. Call it gut instinct, or the rows of scattered books kept in the sort of condition that could only come from having an angry orc threatening to vivisect you everytime you so much as sneezed in the Arcanaeum, but Rumarin pegged him as a College mage.

Probably Septimus, come to think.

“Who’s he _talking_ to?” Rumarin asked, shuffling a little closer to Tsabhi. She’d been trying to teach him stealth— the sort of stealth one only learned from an Ashlander with a questionable past and a Khajiit smuggler-lord, rather than his own brand of _who stole the cookies from the cookie jar_ stealth— and he was picking up on it all right. So he thought.

“Shhh,” she hummed, waving her hand. She wasn’t even looking at the raving Imperial, but the giant… Dwemer… thing in front of him. He gave it a glance but couldn’t find anything particularly impressive about it, except perhaps the fact that it was there. Still, the old man raved at it and Tsabhi was frowning which meant she was thinking very hard about something.

Maybe it was a mage thing. Fine for him, though not so much for Tsabhira.

She stood, and the old man’s head snapped over to them. He didn’t go on the offensive, but directly back to his muttering.  Relieved to be rid of the leg cramp that’d been building up, Rumarin kept his hand at the ready. “So what’s the plan?” he asked, praying she didn’t suggest actually speaking to the old man.

“There’s something in there,” she said, still frowning.

“Too bad there’s not a door.” Gods knew she would make one if it really didn’t have one already, but that sounded like an awful amount of effort.

The frown was replaced with the cool confidence of planning. “I want what’s inside.”  She made her way (carefully) down the icy slope to the old man and Rumarin groaned inwardly. Rambling old hermit it was, then, so Tsabhi could have whatever was in the old dwarf… thing. Maybe it’d be a cheap iron axe; or knowing Skyrim, another one of those infuriating helmets with the horns. Nords would probably war a lot less if they got rid of those tacky things.

_Turns out the whole time the Thalmor just wanted to unmake ugly headgear, not Mundus. They thought it was religious but no, Nords will just wear whatever they have laying around and call it tradition._

He kept an eye on Tsabhi’s conversation, in case Septimus decided to snap, but she had it well in hand and was being uncharacteristically patient with his riddles. He rifled through the books for ones she didn’t already have to save the time, and pocketed the soul gems the Imperial left lying around like he had a thousand of them hidden somewhere.

Another quick look and Tsabhira seemed alarmed, but not the sort of alarm that required him to pay any actual attention. He was sure she’d tell him all about it later, and all the sort of meaning she was trying to divine from the raving of some elderly mage shut up in an icy tomb. She wanted what was in the box, though, and gods help the person more stupid than him who tried to stop her. He’d always heard that those with dragon blood were _particular_ , but that was mostly in Otero joking about Talos.

He nearly jumped when she returned to his side. It was a bad sign that she was frowning again, because it meant that the plan had gone awry before it began. Who knew? Maybe they would get to go home instead of playing with Dwemer toys. “Septimus thinks he knows what’s in the box,” she said softly. She took his hands and tucked them against her sides as a wordless apology for dragging him somewhere so cold.

“Don’t tell me he ruined the surprise,” he gasped.

“He thinks it’s…” She paused, and glanced towards the box with a newfound unease. “He _says_ it’s the Heart of Lorkhan. Or, I mean— he implied it, anyway. _The bane of Kagrenac and Dagoth Ur…_ it could only be the Heart.”

“If it is then I’m vetoing this adventure. We’ll go do something safe like kiss dragons and hug vampires like we usually do,” he said as firmly as he could muster. It still came out sounding like a joke but he was as serious as the rot. There wasn’t enough gold in the world to coax him into pissing with bits and pieces of gods, and even less that would convince him to let Tsabhi do so.

“It _can’t_ be the Heart, Ru. The Nerevarine destroyed it; it’s why Vivec left Morrowind, because the Tribunal lost their godhood through the destruction of the Heart. It’s why Dagoth Ur is dead, how he was able to die— the Heart isn’t in there.” She risked another look at the box, as if whatever was encased inside was watching her. “But whatever is… Septimus is wrong and right at the same time.”

“Don’t start speaking in riddles or I’ll leave you here.”

“It’s daedric, Ru. Whatever’s inside, that is, I can feel it.” She looked up. “And I want it.”

He sighed, letting his head drop back to look at the ceiling. “Of course you do. What if it isn’t one of the daedra you like?” he asked. There was really only one she _liked,_ and the rest were tolerated on the same principle that the Divines were. Her mentor Hans-Ilu had cautioned her not to put all her eggs in one basket, and so while she was first and foremost dedicated to Hermaeus Mora, she knew the rites and prayers of several Daedra, a handful of Aedra, and some miscellaneous gods she thought would be useful to her. Still, she had no love for Molag Bal or Mehrunes Dagon, for example.

“We’ll see, I guess. Septimus wants us to transcribe a Lexicon for him.”

“Is he paying?” It probably wouldn’t dissuade her from doing it, but he could try.

“No, but I’ll collect regardless.”

He must’ve been smitten, because he followed her back out into the cold to start this journey that already felt doomy. He’d been right again, though; the boat had been a bad omen. The Dwemer box, however, was an infinitely worse one.

**Author's Note:**

> [Writing blog here,](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) [game here](https://nebulous.itch.io/manor-hill) (newly updated!), and finally [commissions post here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com/post/162182264019/writing-commissions).
> 
> Sometimes I worry that I've made Rumarin too brave, but then I think "the outright cowardice is largely a front for the fear that he really is incompetent, enacting a kind of rush to fulfil a role he views as inevitable as a means of pretending he's comfortable with it when in reality Tsabhi hasn't been outside of a family unit or experienced real combat before Helgen, while Rumarin has been on his own and travelling for a significant amount of time and has thus far managed not to die and can also use a sword" and I can never decide if that fills me with confidence re: my portrayal of Rumarin or just makes me really sad.
> 
> Also re: the link up there that says "game", I've mentioned this before but not necessarily in this social circle that I'm making a text adventure game and specifically a text adventure relationship game (in the sense that to fulfil a relationship with a character you need not romance them). If you've been here for longer than it took you to read this fic you know that's very my jam and I hope you'll click the link (it goes to itch.io which is a legitimate game website, and gives you a spot in the browser in which to play my browser game, no download required) and give me some good good feedback !! Or some average feedback !! Feedback will not be graded !!
> 
> Oh and this might be slightly worse news but this is literally it for this fic. I never.... wrote anything else for it. I just. You ever have a WIP you really fucking like and you know that whatever groove you got into with it is absolutely fucking dust in the wind by now but by god do you ever want to share the wealth of what you once were with your friends? Here I am.


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